A liquid crystal display device provides display by controlling optical characteristics of light emitted from a light source using a liquid crystal layer and the like in a liquid crystal display panel. Such a liquid crystal display device has been widely used in various fields, using its features such as slim profile, lightweight, and low power consumption. The liquid crystal display panel that is a main member of such a liquid crystal display device generally has a structure where a liquid crystal layer is interposed between a pixel array substrate and a color filter substrate, and a thickness (cell gap) of the liquid crystal layer is maintained by a spacer arranged between the substrates. Examples of the spacer include spherical spacers made of plastic, an inorganic material, and the like; and column spacers made of a resin material, and the like. Among these, the column spacer is excellent in that it can be directly formed on a substrate using a photosensitive resin and the like, for example, by a photolithography method, and such a column spacer can be arranged with high precision.
An arrangement position of such a column spacer can be determined in accordance with a desired spacer density. Generally, as shown in FIG. 8, one spacer is arranged in every pixel of red pixel R, green pixel G, and blue pixel B. If a column spacer 1 overlaps with a pixel electrode 10 arranged on the pixel array substrate, alignment of liquid crystals near the column spacer 1 tends to be disturbed. So, the pixel electrode 10 is provided with a notch in a region where the column spacer 1 is to be formed so that the pixel electrode 10 does not overlap with the column spacer 1. Due to the notch of the pixel electrode 10, an aperture ratio of the pixel is reduced, and the entire luminance is reduced. For this problem, a configuration in which the column spacer 1 is arranged in a region facing blue and red color filters or in a region facing only blue color filter among red, green, and blue color filters is disclosed as a configuration in which the reduction in aperture ratio is suppressed (for example, refer to Patent Document 1)
[Patent Document 1]
Japanese Kokai Publication No. 2002-196338